Beth Philemon & Choir Baton: A Profile by Sarah Martin

In the Spring of 2020 I welcomed the first "official" person to the Choir Baton team, Sarah Martin. Sarah is interning with Choir Baton on a variety of projects in an effort to gain experience in content writing and social media. She is a rising senior in Rhetoric at NC State and has already helped me with so many projects (like this blog) to help produce great Choir Baton content for you to get #morepeoplesinging. 

I was honored she asked to write a profile on me for one of her classes this semester. I loved how she captured my story and asked if I could share with you all. Special thanks to Sarah, not only for letting me share this profile with you all, but for being such a great addition to Choir Baton. 

#MorePeopleSinging, 

Beth

“The biggest struggle at first was me. I had to get over my fear of failure, my fear of not being liked, my fear of not being perfect.” Beth Philemon, founder of Choir Baton, a non-profit organization, has been around music for most of her life. She is now using her passion within the arts to accomplish her goal of more people singing as she completes her Master of Business Administration at NC State.

Philemon, 33, was born in a small, southern, Georgia town called Albany and moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, later in life. She first dipped her toes into the musical world singing in church choirs but recalls her first formal experience during her freshman year at Leesville High School.

“I sang with people who didn't look like me or believe like me. That was powerful, and still is one of my favorite things about choral music.” These moments were the very thing that pushed Beth to study music education at Trevecca Nazarene University, a small liberal arts school in Nashville, Tennessee. After staying and teaching in the area for several years, Philemon returned to graduate school to obtain a master’s degree in choral conducting. There she conducted choirs, vocal jazz and opera groups.

Shortly after graduate school, Philemon returned home to Raleigh, teaching at several local middle and high schools. She describes these years as “life changing,” as she taught at Centennial Campus Magnet Middle School where there had been no choir program in the years prior to her arrival. Philemon realized that she had assumed what these programs were supposed to look like. She began to rethink the choir experience from teaching her students how to read music to expectations and the meanings of being a part of a choir.

Needless to say, choral music is a big part of her life, but when it came to be connecting and teaching with other people in this field, something was missing. There were no resources online that could help her teach these young adults to engage in the choral world and meet the needs of beginners.

“There's something so powerful about being able to ask a colleague how they're teaching a musical concept by walking down the hall to ask. But not everyone has that luxury.” Philemon realized that she could provide resources to support the arts and bring a community together all at once.

And thus, Choir Baton was born. Philemon combined her two loves, choir and social media, with technology to create a virtual resource that could reach a global audience. The organization started as an Instagram account, where choir teachers would take turns sharing their experiences through pictures and videos, providing a collaborative space for people in the arts to learn from each other. This was based on a similar Instagram account, RDU Baton, where locals of Raleigh would run the account for a week, sharing their favorite spots and attractions in the local area.

“Most US schools only have one choir teacher per school, if not one choir teacher spread out across multiple schools. What if this account enabled choir directors and singers to watch, learn and interact with choir?” Philemon launched the account in 2018.  Since its inception, the account has gained a steady following and the number of take overs have grown tremendously, allowing a space for people with a common passion to inspire each other despite not being close in physical distance.

In 2019, Philemon started the Choir Baton podcast, in which she interviews professors, teachers, and community members about life through the lens of choir.  Philemon has completed over 30 episodes, with guests and topics ranging from how to build community to how to teach choir. She also touches on topics that outsiders might not have even considered when they think of the world of choir, claiming it’s not all “roses and sunshine.”

“There are awful politics in choral music. There is blatant sexism in choral music. There are mean people and there are awful things that happen in choirs. I deal so often with people thinking that choir just must be ‘so fun’ because you also just ‘sing all day’ but there is truly so much that goes into it. I've realized that truly everything is connected.”

Recently, Philemon featured a special episode with fellow choir director Joan Riddle Stienmann about how choir has changed amongst recent quarantine efforts, offering a realistic yet positive message that although the choir community cannot be together right now, the time will soon come again.

Today, Choir Baton is a true teaching platform and resource that Philemon needed when she began her teaching journey. The Choir Baton website offers an online teaching membership for music educators where they can access resources like assessments to administer to their students and videos on how to implement particular lesson plans within their classrooms.  These videos feature Philemon herself, sporting a teal Choir Baton t-shirt, walking her viewers through these lessons step by step. Each week, subscribers are emailed a video with a new topic to improve the teaching and learning of middle and high school choir programs.

Choir Baton has seen success in its early days, but it hasn’t come without its struggles. Founding a company and gaining momentum all the while attending graduate school is no easy feat.  “Each day is jam packed with things to do and places to be. I wake up by 7 am or earlier and try to get a workout in before heading to school.” In addition to her graduate school studies, Philemon serves as a graduate assistant for the Poole College of Management and works with the Graduate School’s communication and marketing team on their social media accounts. Outside of NC State, she offers private voice and piano lessons in her home studio.

             Before the quarantine, Philemon would be hustling from one place on campus to the next, but now she stays home, taking back-to-back Zoom calls on her living room couch with her dog causing the occasional ruckus in the background, her blonde hair tied back and covered in an NC State hat. Though school has been a bit more challenging with its transition online, there seems to never have been a better time to ramp up the efforts with Choir Baton. With people sitting at home and not able to go to practice, Philemon is ready to take her business to the next level.

“Choir Baton was perfectly positioned to help choir teachers combat online teaching

amidst COVID-19. I was able to make an entire course for teachers for free and we've had almost 400 people sign up in less than a month. That is huge!” A growing online audience is not the only win Philemon has seen since the start of Choir Baton. She recently placed third in the Lulu

Entrepreneurship Games at NC State, and she has learned a lot about herself along the way.

            “As Choir Baton has grown, I've realized that in order for me to grow like I want, I need to outsource things.” Philemon described herself as an independent person, taking on large projects all on her own but realized that sharing some the work for her business is the smart move to make. Bringing on new people to help with the projects will get more things done, but she worries that others may not feel the “same sense of accomplishment in the small things” like she does.

So what is next for Choir Baton? Philemon has a lot planned. “My problem is never not having ideas for how we can grow and expand Choir Baton; it's determining which ideas are the right ones.” Now she will focus on growing the numbers, connecting a larger audience online and improving the quality of content she offers to her customers. Later this year, Philemon is hosting a Choir Baton singer course geared towards adult singers who lack choral literacy due to never being involved in the music community or have forgotten what they learned and need a refresher.

As for the more distant future, Philemon is hoping to transition her non-profit business to produce revenue and grow to employ multiple people full time. When the quarantine is over, she hopes to reenter the space with a larger presence and host events on a global scale. While these bigger goals will occur down the line, her initial mission is the same as it always will be: to get more people singing. “If the work we're doing encourages just one person to start singing either for the first time or again, that's what we're all about.”

Sarah Martin